John Grant

Kurt Vile is a philosophical Philadelphian on "b'lieve i'm goin down," the hirsute rocker's sixth album. "Humming a sad song when I'm alone," he sings to himself, on "Wheelhouse." "But you gotta be alone to figure things out sometimes." Indeed you do, and Vile seems to have figured out that the sanguine trance rock of 2013's cheerful "Wakin on a Pretty Daze" didn't capture the full spectrum of what he has to say. The essential cheerfulness of that album is replaced here by an altogether darker worldview. "We'll take...